Depleted uranium has been used for years in the production of munitions. The neutralized waste products from such processes typically include metals such as copper and uranium in oxide or hydroxide form. Disposal of these wastes has increasingly become a problem.
Disposal options to date include burying the waste in liquid or dried form in a secure, lined, capped landfill to prevent water from percolating through the waste. Such disposal is problematic because there is always the chance that the basin will leak, there are fewer and fewer sites that will take such wastes, and the disposal is extremely expensive, running from $25.00 to $300.00 per cubic foot of waste. Often times this also involves trucking the waste across country, which adds to the expense and potential hazard. Another disposal option is glassification or state transformation in which the waste is first mixed with sand and then current is applied to melt the sand. The glassified solid waste product is more stable and thus is easier to dispose of. However, this process does not work well and is extremely expensive to conduct.